Industrial automation environments include automobile manufacturing factories, food processing plants, and microprocessor fabrication facilities. The typical industrial environment includes various machines, such as pumps, motors, and robots. These machines continually produce data that indicates the current status of the machines, such as the machine's pressure, temperature, or speed.
The typical industrial environment also includes a Human-Machine Interface (HMI). The HMI can display a graphical representation of an industrial automation environment, including graphical representations of machines. The HMI also receives and processes operation data from the machines to generate various graphical displays. The graphical displays indicate the current and historical status of the machines. For example, an HMI graphical display might indicate the pressure of a pump, the speed of a motor, or the output of a robot.
A user may remotely operate a communication device to access a communication network of an industrial automation environment. The communication device functions as a remote HMI and retrieves operation data from the machines and graphics data from the HMI over a communication network. Unfortunately, frequent requests for such data from multiple communication devices puts strain on the HMI, the machines, and the network.